CALL OF THE BULL

The story of Manuel Benitez "El Cordobes"

The traditional way of learning bullfighting was to Join a Torero school and be taught by a master. Or if you were lucky enough to come from a rich bullfighting family, the corridas were waiting for you.

For others, they must follow the call of the bull even if these doors of opportunity are closed to them. Their way was much more dangerous, it was the way of Currito de la Cruz. Fight the bulls by the light of the full moon. There was nothing new about it; brave Spanish youths had resorted to it for years. Even the great Juan Belmonte had taken his first steps toward the fiesta brava this way. And they way of Manuel Benitez (El Cordobes)

The practice was roundly condemned by all associated with the corrida.

The whole premise of bullfighting is that it is the first confrontation between man and dismounted man. A bull loses his innocence only once, and if he has been fought in the field he will remember the lesson he learned in there when he gets to the ring. They say a bull learns more in half an hour than a man does in a lifetime.

Manuel Benitez and Juan Horrillo chose the pastures of Don Felix Moreno

The senor of Palma del Rio for their first forbidden venture into the world of moonlight bullfighting. The morning before Manolo had stolen the blanket of his sister's bed and soaked it in a bucket of punia, a cheap brick-colored dye.

As they entered the pasture the muffled tinkling of the bell .It was that sound that marked the presence of a steer. The bulls couldn't be to far away.

Then suddenly, the bulls were in front of them. They were barely fifteen yards away on a flatpiece of ground atop a gentle rise.There were about a dozen of them.they were perhaps two-year bulls close at hand for the were the largest and most terrifying creatures they had ever seen.

Manolo gently unfolded the blanket he had stolen from his sister's bed.Silently he spread it apart with the two sticks given to him a carpenter,and with his old cival war bayonet in his other had he forced himself to his feet and began his walk towards one of the animals.

Alive with the exhilaration of suddenly finding himself in front this brave animal he stopped ten yards from the bull,stood up straight,arched his back and with his scrap of cloth in front of him in a high-pitched uncertain voice:

"Hey,Toro."

The animal raised his heavy head and fixed its dull eyes on the cloth.Manolo forced himself to lock the joints of his knees to stop them trembling ,his heart was pounding inside his ribcage. Manolo called again this time the animal shook as though preparing to charge at his lure.Astonishingly,he did not.He turned and trotted back to the herd.

Manolo stood there watching him go, to stupefied by the sight to make a movement of any sort.That moment was one of the most extraordinary revelations of his life.He had barely been able to stand in front of that bull.Yet that proud heir of the Saltillo strain had fled before the movements of his sisters old blanket. Anear hysterical self-confidence filled him and the fear flowed out of his limbs in one rush of feeling.years later even when he was great matador he could still recall his boyish awe at that moment and wonder if a different reaction from the bull might not have sent him scurrying back to the streets of Palma del Rio.In fact the animal's inexplicable departure had nothing to do with fear.The two would be matadors had forgotten in their haste that a bull will only charge in its own defence. the conditions for this to happen were not in place.

For a bull to attack in an open field he must first be cut of from the herd and driven away until he is ready to fight.Using their young bodies as lures,Manolo and Juan drew the young bull on until finally caught up in the game the animal forgot the growing distance between him and his herd.

At last the chase stopped near a clump of willow trees miles from the spot at which Manolo and Juan had spotted the bull, it was by now three o'clock in the morning.Their bull suddenly sensed his isolation. He lifted his enormous head upwards,thrashing his horns back and forth against the night sky.

Manolo stared at him. "He's mine, he's mine,"he whispered to Juan.Manolo seemed like a madman.His body was quivering and trembling with excitement

He was alone with his bull.There was no sound in the pasture.It was quite only the sond of each tired,panting breath of the bull before him.

With more confidence this time Manolo unfolded the blanket.Shaking it lightly, he advanced on the darkform.The shadow stirred.With a rush the bull swept at him out of the semidarkness.Manolo clutched the dew silked grass with his toes.He fixed his eyes on the bull. Slowly, as he had been taught to do, he drew the muleta along before the bull, past his thighs and into the void behind him. And it happened. Just as he had been old it would,just as the rule proclaimed,the black mass slipped past his shaking body,following the command of the muleta. Manolo was elated. He spun and before the bull could go back to the shadows, he drew him back again,then again and again.And each time the bull came past, the delirious boy saw the miracle of the muleta work.On and on he went spinning the bull around him,twisting him at his will until it seemed to Juan that "he was in a trance". Manolo's sweating body sparkling in the moonlight with this black bull as his shadow.

Manolo finally slipped away from his bull Exhausted and lay until morning under the branches of a willow tree.

What ever doubts about bullfighting Manuel Benitez might have had were resolved by that first moonlight encounter with the bulls.The pattern of his life changed. He belonged to the bulls now.

From the book Or I'll dress you in Mourning

The Autobiography of Manuel Benitez (El Cordobes)

By Collins & Lapierre (c)